"For something that seems so simple in concept, Web Services can be downright confusing to actually call and implement. Part of the difficulty is trying to get the SOAP envelope format correct. But there's an alternative out there called REST, and it's covered very well in the book RESTful Web Services. While it might not change what you do in the Notes/Domino world right away, I believe it's worth reading."
--Thomas Duff, Developer Tips

"If youre planning on building RESTful web services, this book is a great place to start. Even if youre not, its a pretty good book to learn more about them."
--Pat Eyler, On Ruby Blog

"RESTful Web Services is an important guide to connecting web functions with everyday technologies everyone uses. REST is an architectural style that drives the web, and RESTful Web Services introduces ROA and the roles that govern design of RESTful web services."
--James Cox, The Bookwatch - Computer Shelf

"The book intends to act as a canonical reference for all things RESTful. The web is littered with hundreds of resources describing REST and RESTful services, but this book is a one stop shop for understanding REST. The authors' goal is to demonstrate the power and the limitations of the basic web technologies (HTTP/URI/XML) and how they can be harnessed for vastly scalable distributed applications that do not go against the grain of the web. Concrete principles for designing RESTful web services (the Resource Oriented Architecture) are explained in detail...The book is well written and I had no trouble finishing off all the ~400 pages. For this it gets a 5* for readability. The material presented is well researched and very useful for both experienced and new web programmers, fetching it a 5* rating for relevance."
--Aditya Gore, JavaLobby

"It is not an introductory book for Ruby and honestly I used the references given in the book to start with Ruby, because I didn't know anything of the language. Later on, when I got some feeling about the language, I started to enjoy the book, because it is giving a lot of information in the discussions that goes widely over the initial given problem for understanding more of its philosophy. It's a big book, but it is also giving a lot of recipes to real-world problems. If I'm going to program something in Ruby, I will search a good starting point recipe, that will give me a hint to a good solution of the problems I'll encounter. I would recommend the book to everyone who programs in Ruby."
--Bart Vrancken, JavaLobby

"As with the previous OReilly books, I found RESTful Web Services to continue in the successful tradition of presenting potentially complicated information in such an easy to follow and logical manner. It is obvious that the authors used their considerable experience in giving us the best of the best, and I have no doubt that my every question will be answered. Aimed to being the first book to apply the REST design philosophy to real web services, I have to congratulate the authors and OReilly Media for giving us users exactly that!"
--Alain B. Renaud, TCM Reviews

"I was tempted to think I wasn't ready for this book yet, as I don't have a firm Ruby foundation. But I'm glad I ignored that thought. For a beginner, this is a wealth of real code that does things that you will need to do in all your programs. String manipulation, number and date processing, etc. Those are the things that are fairly simple when you have experience, but stumbling blocks when you have to think about every step you take. For the intermediate and experienced coder, you'll find more advanced techniques like web services or multithreading your programs. In both cases (beginner or expert), a book like this will start to seed your imagination. Scanning through the recipes, you're sure to have one of those "ooohh... I didn't think about doing *that*!" moments."
--Thomas Duff, Duffbert's Random Musings

"Here is the definitive book on implementing Ruby, covering such important topics as strings and numbers, arrays and hashes, databases, graphics, and multitasking. The authors have put together an incredible collection of ready-to-use solutions, clearly documented, with all necessary code. Programmers can get a head start by simply dropping code from the book into their work."
--Michael Kleper, The Kleper Report on Digital Publishing

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